Jim Bouton on Greenies and Asterisks

I'm sure even after all these years, Jim Bouton, former big leaguer and author of the iconic Ball Four, isn't a voice that Major League Baseball wants to hear. But, that's never stopped him before, so let's take a few seconds to consider his opinion about MLB's performance-enhancing drug crisis. In a recent interview with Kevin Hayward on the blog All on the Field, Bouton made the distinction between "greenies" and some of the PEDs used by players today:

But you have to distinguish greenies -- the peptos as they were called -- from steroids. Greenies only allowed you to play up to your ability. If you didn't get a good night's sleep, or you had a hangover, it would allow you to play up to your ability, or at least some players thought that. It did not create a different human being. It did not change your physical makeup. It did not allow you to play beyond your ability, your normal ability as steroids do and as Human Growth Hormone does.

I'm not sure I completely believe the "only play up to your ability" argument. So they help the guy who's hungover and tired; is he saying they have no effect at all on someone who got a good night's sleep? Or do they increase concentration across the board? I've never used them so I don't know, but I suspect it's the latter. Bouton also has a suggestion for how we should view some of the records that have fallen recently (after the jump).

A blue ribbon panel needs to be appointed and be given a launch budget and investigate just exactly what kind of impact steroids have on batting and pitching. And also [to determine] what period of time were they prevalent, and to what extent have they affected the numbers, the records.

This would be not a punitive thing; this would be investigatory simply to establish which records are legitimate and which ones are not. And then, they need to figure out where the impact is. If it's on home runs -- for example, 40 percent increase in home runs as a result of steroids -- they need to apply those numbers to the numbers that were actually hit so that next to the actual number of home runs hit, you'd have, in parentheses, a steroid adjusted number. I call it the S.A.N. It would sit there in parentheses next to the actual number hit.

It's interesting in theory, but it's worth pointing out that the playing field has never been completely level. In the past, white players didn't play against black competition: should Babe Ruth's 714 home runs get a R.A.N. (race adjusted number) next to it? After all, he probably wouldn't have hit quite as many home runs had he faced Satchel Paige and other Negro League stars.

And how do you determine who actually used steroids and who had their numbers suppressed because they faced pitchers on the juice? It's a nice hypothetical solution, but there are too many wrinkles in the real world to ever put it to use.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-18-2007 @ 2:09PM

Jack's Raging Bile Duct said...

Jim Bouton may have released the very first tell-all book about baseball, but that in and of itself does not make him an expert on drugs.

Amphetamines help hand-eye coordination, help speed up reaction time - which is essential for hitting - and help focus, again, an essential took for hitting.

As I am not a medical professional, my opinion should carry no more weight than Bouton's. But giving this guy the forum from which he is able to spew ignorance only helps muddy the already dirty waters.

9-18-2007 @ 2:57PM

carl said...

Sounds like Jim is just trying to downplay what he did..I'M NOT A CHEATER LIKE BARRY...Yea you are

9-18-2007 @ 6:53PM

Gary "Pops" O'Maxfield said...

As long as men have been paid to play baseball, they have utilized performance enhancing drugs. Be it coffee, cola, greenies or HGH. It used to be legal "Elixers" laced with cocaine and opium in the 19th century. Should we discount ALL baseball records because of drug embellishment? I'm not sure even the new drugs can make someone perform beyond 100% of their innate ability. If money is involved, someone will always have a work-around. Lets not be naive.

9-18-2007 @ 10:18PM

Jim Bouton said...

Matt. Your comment about there never being a level playing field
(Babe Ruth didn't have to face black pitcher's, etc) is not relevant.
In the Question of the Week archives on my website - jimbouton.com -
I said the following: Historical analogies (advantages or disadvantages
due to shorter seasons, no night games, travel, racial barriers, etc.) are
not relevant because, in each case, players of a particular era played
under the same conditions. What distorts statistics is unfair (and hidden)
competition within the same era. Jim Bouton

9-18-2007 @ 10:58PM

Matt W. said...

Jim,

I appreciate your reply but respectfully disagree. Players of a particular era played under the same conditions ... but only if they were allowed to play in the first place. We'll never know how many career wins or strikeouts Satchel Paige could have tallied because he wasn't allowed to enter the majors until he was 41. To put that in perspective, that's akin to this year being Greg Maddux's "rookie" year.

Obviously we know enough about Paige to realize that he deserved a spot in the Hall of Fame despite winning just 28 games in the majors, but how can we admit that his career numbers were distorted by racial barriers but not say the same about the numbers put up by white players who played at the same time?

My point, I guess, is that the records being broken today are hardly sacred, and therefore not worthy of requiring an asterisk or re-calculated with an SAN. Just as it would be difficult (if not impossible) for a non-steroid user to break a record today, it was literally impossible for a black player to break a record back then.

9-19-2007 @ 2:43PM

lw said...

Hey Matt--Your type of idioticiallyplaying the racial card whenever someone doesn't have a reasonable answer is nothing but a cop out and dividsionary tactic along racial haterd lines. The streroid impact is NOT hypothetical! We KNOW what players have accompoished. We DON'T know how many fewer HRs Ruth would have hit if he played against Paige or how many MORE, if he hit off some LOUSY black pitchers, as well or were they ALL great!? (Yeah, that's how stupid your statement is, Matt.) Ruth also didn't have the watered down staffs to face that the guys do today. Give Ruth or Gehrig or Aaron or Kiner some steroids and HGH and then put him up against half these kids that can just about get the ball over the plate. You may be talking about the 900 homer club and over 1,000 HRs with the same at bats as Bonds with Ruth on 'roids. If you know anything about baseball, you know that if Ralph Kiner, after what he did his 10 years before he hurt his back had these drugs to gt HIM back at the plate, you may've been looking at 800 or more HRs over 20 years there. Do some research before you write. Or at least use your common sense. Stop talking through your hat and stirring up cr*p needlessly. Stick with baseball or go join the NAACP or Jewish Defense League....no the United Arab Republic, you're stalking stirring up hatred.

9-19-2007 @ 2:42PM

Lon said...

Forget the hypothetical solutions, the worst thing you can do with a Bonds or Canseco is just forget about them and talk Gehrig and Ripken and guys like Jim Abbott. The fans made Ruth the icon he was, not just the HRs. The fans can demoralize Bonds, too, by ignoring him until ARod gets close to catching him. Until then, the Commissioner got it right--ignore him--that hurts more to these egomaniacs, who risk their sanity and lives on dangerous drugs for their egos.

9-19-2007 @ 3:04PM

"The streroid impact is NOT hypothetical! We KNOW what players have accompoished. We DON'T know how many fewer HRs Ruth would have hit if he played against Paige or how many MORE, if he hit off some LOUSY black pitchers ..."

I never said the steroid impact was hypothetical. And just as we don't know how many home runs Ruth would have hit against black pitchers, we have no idea how many home runs juiced hitters would have hit without steroids, or how many of at-bats clean players had against pitchers on the juice.

Also, Lon/lw, trying to fabricate support for your viewpoint by posting under two user names is obvious. If that's what you're going to do, at least go through the trouble of using two email addresses.

9-19-2007 @ 4:11PM

Richard said...

That argument about Ruth not facing black pitchers is annoying to me. How many black pitchers would the Babe have faced? What if the supremely talented black pitchers like Satchel Page were in the NL? How often would the Babe have faced them? Never? In the World Series once in a while? Once a year? How much of an impact would that have made on his career? None.

If you want to make the point that talent pool for baseball is a lot broader now than in Babe's time, I have no argument. How many Caribbean pitchers did Babe face? How many Asians? That is a valid point. But bear this is mind: when Ruth played, baseball was really the only professional sport. How many potential quality pitchers are NFL players, particularly QB? There are so many more options now for elite athletes than there were back in the 1920s. The talent pool is broader and deeper but also much more diluted.

Also, consider this: there were only 16 MLB teams then. And each team used only 4 starters. That's 64 starters in all of MLB. Now there are 150. How many quality starters do most teams have? Two? Three?Heck, the Yankees are using a guy who's 45 years old and he's still one of the best starters in baseball.

The point that Ruth and Gehrig and all of the old guys didn't face the best quality competition because individuals of African descent were not allowed to play in MLB is lame. I wish that it would just go away. For every time that Ruth didn't face Satchel Page, Barry Bonds and his ilk get to face Joe Kennedy and Steve Trachsel and a whole bushel basket of other guys who would not have gotten a sniff of the bigs in the 1930s.